Trustee/Representative Letter

Have you ever considered writing a letter to your trustee or the representative of your estate? So this would be an opportunity for you to clearly lay out for them some of those specifics that you might have upon your passing of how things would be handled. So you probably have you know a Will or maybe Power of Attorney documents for healthcare, financial, maybe you have a Trust that’s in place. But who is that individual or individuals that you’ve named to be the one handling that when you pass away? So some things you may want to consider is just simply putting together a letter clearly laying out you know some important details. So some of those things that I’ll walk you through next may include you know where are your different estate planning documents? Are there different revisions that you’ve done recently that would need to be added to that file and make sure that the trustee representative knows where those documents are held. Where are your different bank accounts? What about your different investment accounts? I know something here at our office we clearly lay out for individuals and couples that we’re working with of hey, if something happens just call us. We’ll help walk through your beneficiaries every single detail. So that’s important to know. What about life insurance? I’ve come across a number of folks that maybe had an old life insurance policy that they had through work that was 20, 30 years ago. And you know it may be $5K or something, but it’s important that you know where that is and who they’re supposed to call. What about a safety deposit box? What about Deeds and Titles? Are those held in a safe and if so, how do you access that safe? Different user names and passwords for websites. I mean that’s one now a days that seems like there’s so many of them out there that you have. What’s a list maybe of those so that way then your loved ones can go ahead and help update those different files. What about funeral arrangements or burial instructions. Have you laid those out for them? Personal property wishes, I know something my Grandma did with different paintings in the house is put pictures or names on those pictures of family members who she knew wanted to have those. What about different buried belongings such as gold or silver? Where is that held and if so, give those instructions to somebody so if something were to happen to you, they would know how to access it. So the key thing is, you know tell the person why you picked them and why you want them handling your estate. So I encourage you to just simply compile a letter that lays out some of these items that we’ve shared here today and share those with your trustee or representative.